Audience response systems (ARS), in which group members use camera-equipped wireless computing devices to vote on topics, answer questions and confirm attendance are commonly used today to facilitate group interaction. Audience response systems can be employed for a variety of purposes and in various types of group environments. As one example, audience response systems are used by teachers in a classroom setting (e.g., to take attendance, or to administer tests and quizzes), and research indicates that there are various benefits to using audience response systems in such a setting. For instance, audience response systems in classrooms have been shown to improve attentiveness, increase knowledge retention and generally create a more enjoyable classroom environment and contribute to a more positive learning experience.
In a typical audience response system architecture, multiple computing devices associated with different users communicate wirelessly, e.g., using radio frequency or infrared communication technology, with one or more wireless aggregation points that generally collect and, possibly, process the data communicated by the audience via the camera-equipped wireless computing devices. A wireless aggregation point is typically (but not always) communicatively coupled to a centralized computing device, such as a personal computer, that runs a program which generally controls the operation of the audience response system. That is, the centralized computing device may be used to process information received from the computing devices and to determine what information is sent to the computing devices. Historically, audience response systems have used proprietary computing devices supplied and configured by the manufacturer. However, with the prevalence of camera-equipped wireless computing devices, such as smart phones, tablets, and laptops many institutions are instituting a bring your own device (BYOD) policy in order to reduce or remove the need to purchase proprietary computing devices from manufacturers and to allow students to use devices with which they are familiar and comfortable.
In order for an audience response system to function properly and effectively, however, the computing devices typically need to be configured to operate together in an efficient manner, and without interfering with one another. As a result, teachers may end up spending significant time configuring and reconfiguring computing devices, or even just verifying that the configuration of each computing device is proper. This may render the audience response system prohibitively inefficient and its use unjustified.
Accordingly, audience response system manufactures have been faced with the challenge of developing a method for students to simply and quickly connect their wireless computing devices, many of which happen to be digital camera-equipped, to a teacher's centralized computing device in the classroom. Most of these camera-equipped wireless computing devices connect through a standard wireless network, as per IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.16, or other wireless communication protocols and standards, though some camera-equipped wireless computing devices are connected to a cellular network.
Prior art systems have used methods where a teacher provides an IP address and other configuration parameters to students by posting them on a sign, providing them on a piece of paper, or reading them aloud. The students then have to manually type this information into their camera-equipped wireless computing device. However, prior art systems have numerous short comings. Depending on the network structure, a teacher may have to provide not only an IP address and a password, but port configurations. Manually entering configuration parameters is time consuming and error-prone, as one student's typing error can delay an entire class. Furthermore, once the students are connected to the wireless network, they still must find or “discover” the centralized computing device and configure their wireless computing device to connect with the centralized computing device in order to exchange information with a that centralized computing device, e.g. a host computer. Because many students and teachers are still uncomfortable with configuring individual wireless computing devices, entering so much configuration parameters leads to frustration and causes students to lose interest. Moreover, because students have classes in many different classrooms throughout the day, the accumulated time spent configuring their wireless computing devices for each class during the course of a school day reduces the amount of time students are actually able to take advantage of the audience response systems and participate in other learning activities.
Another prior art method includes a centralized computing device to broadcast connection information to a plurality of wireless computing devices and has the students choose the computer they want to connect to and type in a password. Many networks, however, prevent broadcasting from all or most computers to maintain network reliability and security and therefore this method does not always work in a classroom environment. Yet another prior art method functions in reverse, and uses the students' wireless computing devices to broadcast connection information to the control system. This method is even more time consuming and still suffers from the problems listed above.